Nebraska Books

Mari Sandoz portrays america after the frontier. In these books she tells tales of life as America grew up. Most stories are about the children of the pioneers, people who grew up with stories of indians and wild days but had adventures of their own, which Mari wonderfully captures in these books. Anyone who liked her other books like Old Jules or Cheyenne Autumn should read these stories, which give a picture of what nebraska area was like in the 1890-1930 era. Mari Sandoz writes wonderfully as usual.

At long last, a dispassionate, balanced biography of Antonio López de Santa Anna is available that is informed by the last thirty years of historiographical advances in nineteenth century Mexican history. Santa Anna of Mexico, written by Will Fowler, one of the leading Anglophone interpreters of nineteenth century Mexico, provides the reader with a new perspective that chips away at the barnacles of the Black Legend that for over 150 years have encrusted the "leader all Mexicans (and Texans) love to hate."

Faced with internal division as a result of provinces not yet fully integrated and external adversaries that lusted after territory and markets, Mexico's journey toward forging nation would be prolonged, painful and problematic. In Fowler's hands, Santa Anna emerges as a man of his time when Mexico was making this painful journey of trying to define herself as a nation and create a hegemonic state that could govern and at the same time defend its territorial integrity. Consequently, it was a time of experimentation or as Fowler states a time for varying proposals. During this "Age of Proposals", (for a detailed look at this era, see Fowler's Mexico in the Age of Proposals) Santa Anna was one of many struggling to find ways of assimilating heterogeneous cultures and integrating legitimate claims from Mexico's far-flung provinces under a suitable governing framework before they could construct a hegemonic state, construct (imagine) a unified social identity and truly forge a nation-state.

According to Fowler, Santa Anna was "not the power-crazed megalomaniac his critics made him out to be" and did not aspire to having absolute power. Instead, he was consistent in his popular nationalism with an anti-politics and anti-party stance, in which he tried to play the role of an arbitrator between the ever-disputing political elite. Santa Anna also emerges as a patriotic, courageous, albeit impetuous military man who loved his country and whose "personal corruption and alleged lack of principle differed little from that of many other successful generals and politicians."

A professor of Texas history once lectured that one cannot understand Texas history without understanding Mexican history. For those Texas historians who want to understand the events of the 1834 closure of congress, a congress that only had six days left in its legislative calendar, Fowler states that "[a]lthough Santa Anna was the elected president (1833-1836), he did not actually serve as president for more than a few months, making a mockery of the accusations that he was a tyrant or that he was personally responsible for the eventual change to centralism." What Santa Anna did do after the closure of congress was take emergency powers to dismantle the radical anti-clerical reforms that were adversely agitating the republic. But, Vicente Guerrero had already set a precedence of taking emergency powers during his presidency. Historians of Texas should heed that advice and enrich their understanding of the events of 1832-1836 by incorporating this excellent study as well as other recent works written by Mexican scholars into their studies instead of resorting to the dictator-tyrant typology that up to the present so many have done.

Fowler's judgment in the end is that Santa Anna "does not deserve to carry the full blame for everything that went wrong in Mexico following independence. His story, with all the contradictions, confusion, and pain that it entailed was one that reflected the traumas Mexico had to endure during the early national period to become a modern nation-state."

Combining a seventeen-year long research into the politics of independent Mexico and primary materials from municipal, state, regional and national (including the heretofore difficult to access military) archives, Fowler presents an excellent, scholarly yet accessible one-volume study of this much disparaged Mexican. This book is one of the essential studies to understanding what eminent Mexican historian, Josefina Vásquez, has termed, "los años olividados."

There have been a great many fine books published in the last year on Lewis and Clark. One of the very best of those books is Dayton Duncan's Scenes Of Visionary Enchantment: Reflections On Lewis And Clark and richly deserves ongoing recommendation beyond the famous expedition's anniversary date. Presenting Duncan's retracing of the Corps of Discovery's route from St. Louis to the Pacific and back - four different times in the past twenty years, his travelogue commentary provides keen insights on people and places seen along the way, emphasizing why Lewis and Clark's discoveries remain so important today.

I first heard Natalia Singer read aloud from her book at a conference a few years back and was both elated and moved. Here was someone writing about the deeply personal struggle involved in dealing with her mother's mental illness, and yet weaving the story against the background of a relatively unmined, under-appreciated decade in our nation's history. We've had the 60's done to death, with almost as much (mis)information and rant having been written about the 70's. But what to make of coming of age in the 80's?

In Singer's capable hands, we experience both her own personal turmoil and growth, as well as that of the nation. Written with a combination of clarity, honesty and true empathy for those close to her during her journey, Singer's book provides a deeply satisfying, entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Wilkerson's Scribe of the Great Plains tells the wonderful story of Mari Sandoz, writer of the definitive work on Crazy Horse. It is a work enriched with detail of Sandoz' life as a child growing up on the plains of Nebraska. Although a part of the Great Heartlander series of books written for schoolchildren, the book maintains interest for readers of all ages. It is written with excellent detail of prairie life and genuinely captures the day-to-day life of a young person living in the west.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book - both for its artwork and for the descriptive text and content. The fact that it is in black and white does not detract in any way, shape or form from the enjoyment of browsing through its pages. It has become one of my favorite books that I recommend to others with a diversity of interests - mental states, the architecture and design of asylums and sanitariums, the questionable diagnoses and treatments of mental illness through the ages, the abuse and exploitation of vulnerability, authentic facial expressions of great terror, pain and suffering, and the misguided views and prejudice of various historical periods. It even makes a fine coffee table book for those of us that are a little out of the ordinary.

What a great book! I bought this book out of curiousity years again and was overjoyed at the abundance of my childhood memories Teresa had captured in her own recollection. I'm sorry to see that this book is no longer being printed, as I feel that many a mother would appreciate and adore the wisdom of "momsense".

The Seven Visions of Bull Lodge is one of a very limited literary source or documentation of the Gros Ventre (Grow-Von) American Indain Tribe of Northern Montana. Known to themselves as the White Clay People, Bull Lodge was a powerful spiritual healer and warrior, being one of the last fully authorized Keepers of the White Clay People's sacred Feathered Pipe. The information comes from the Depression Era (1930) as told by Bull Lodge's daughter, Garter Snake. Fred Gone translates the story of her father's spiritual and leadership journey. George Horse Capture, Sr. ed. the text to introduce the reader to the issues and worldviews of the White Clay People.

Anyone interested in authentic tradtional culture and an understanding of the sacred lands of Montana will find the book of interest. Anyone seeking to learn more about the Great Plains Cultures will find this book insightfull.

Lorna Martens, a German Literature professor at the University of Virginia, is the author of this fine study of contemporary Austrian literature. It is a must for anyone with an interest in the field. Dr. Martens is a wonderful writer and the texts she has chosen for study are analyzed clearly and effectively.

I haven't read any Ben Jonson plays, but I am interested in the entire English Renaissance genre so I took a flyer with this book. It is one of the best Shakespearean Scholarship reads I've found, I am usually disappointed when the Scholars feel a need to write above 'popular' scholarship (where they believe they need to dumb things down). To me, this book hits a challenging happy medium of thoughtful argument without flights of fancy indecipherable literary rhetoric. IOW ...

It is thoughtful and accessible without all their esoteric jargon. Be prepared to think because the Arthur has done some homework. I don't always see things the same way as him, but his arguments show some determination at reasonable analysis, rather than blindly endorsing some flavor-of-the-month view, regardless of how outrageous many of them are.

Unfortunately, I cannot use this review as a basis for recommending other books by the same Arthur.